As the writer Bruce Sterling puts it, borrowing a bit from Baudrillard and applying it to design, we are now approaching an age of technological advancement when "there is more stored in the map than there is in the territory." Put more simply, the story surrounding a given "thing," a product or service we buy and use, is rapidly exceeding the value of the thing itself. The identity of a product can no longer be easily defined through its form factor, but rather by the information that encases it, passes through it, and is accumulated by it over the course of its lifetime. The notion of this emerging product universe covers far more than we are used to considering in the creative equation: the form, the means of production, the business built around it, the social implications of its existence, the ecological impact of its creation, the object's role in a system of multiple devices, the social community developed to manage, discuss, and enjoy the object at hand. Sterling calls this new modern thing a "spime"--and it has massive implications for design.

There is a second effect at play as well: As the conceptual scope of our work expands, the design artifact, the object itself, must assume new value as identifying symbol. This is the irony of the situation: while the object itself has become less dominant in the overall product story, it assumes new importance as the icon for this much larger set of relationships. Human nature will always seek a focal point--a singularity--to recognize, capture, and associate with the greater notions at hand. No matter the complexity of the relationship, it is always the artifact, with its physical or digital touchpoints, that attracts us first.

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Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, and Chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Allan lectures around the world and at professional conferences including IDSA, AIGA and IxDA, has been a guest critic at various design schools in including Yale University, IIT, Carnegie Mellon, Ravensbourne, RMIT,...

Allan Chochinov is a partner of Core77, a New York-based design network serving a global community of designers and design enthusiasts, and Chair of the new MFA in Products of Design graduate program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Allan lectures around the world and at professional conferences including IDSA, AIGA and IxDA, has been a guest critic at various design schools in including Yale University, IIT, Carnegie Mellon, Ravensbourne, RMIT, University of Minnesota, Emily Carr, and RISD. He has moderated and led workshops and symposia at the Aspen Design Conference, the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio, Compost Modern, and Winterhouse, and is a frequent design competition juror. Prior to Core77, his work in product design focused on the medical, surgical, and diagnostic fields, as well as on consumer products and workplace systems. He has been named on numerous design and utility patents and has received awards from The Art Directors Club, I.D. Magazine, Communication Arts, and The One Club.

An extensive profile of Academy of Art University in San Francisco. The family that founded the school, their extensive real-estate holdings (as they have no central campus), their recruitment through advertising, their violation of various building usage and signage requirements, their athletics, their accreditation, and much, much more. Also see...

The Involution Master Academy, located at Involution Studios in Sunnyvale, California, offers classes specifically for experienced professionals in design and related fields and will begin with Steve Portigal's course, "Design Research Methods," on October 9th, running every Tuesday until November 13th. The course will directly expose students to core design...

It's not like the OLPC pot wasn't already stirred-a-plenty, but Bruce Nussbaum's latest OLPC bit at BusinessWeek stirred up a frenzy of talk-back in the ol' comments section, further stirring the stir. Nussbaum disappointedly calls out the negation of good design thanks to a nonsensical top-down strategy on Negroponte's part.
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Hey, design conferences aren't just for us grown ups, you know. Well, from this point on, at least. Explore Design is North America's first design education expo just for the young'ns. Two days of interactive exhibits, hands-on workshops, and seminars will span the industries of Industrial Design, Graphic Design, Architecture,...